Chapter Eight #2
That made Elizabeth look at the young woman with a little surprise. She would have assumed that anyone of Georgiana’s age would guess at the purpose. Elizabeth blushed and muttered, “To calm the baby.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam stared at his cousin.
“She’s too innocent. I have seen things in Spain.
And now I see the way we treat gentlewomen.
No wonder you were such an easy mark for that damned—I apologize, that deserving of hell torments—Mr. Wickham.
Mrs. Wickham, I apologize if this embarrasses you horribly, but in the absence of a mother or any trusted female companion to teach her, I must say something to my cousin—she is my charge, though both Darcy and I have failed her.
May I assume, Mrs. Wickham, that you still feed the girl from the breast, even though she is a large bouncing creature? ”
“On occasion,” Elizabeth replied smiling. “And I shall bear up under the awkwardness of the conversation for the sake of the edification of the young. I have been in no hurry to wean her. It might be of value to explain why—assuming, you can guess.”
“What?” Georgiana looked down at her own chest. “Whatever does that mean? You hold the food up to your bosom?”
Colonel Fitzwilliam stared at the girl with a sort of horror.
“Are you, in actual, honest fact ignorant upon this point, or do you mean to convince me that you are so profoundly ignorant, so that I shall think kindly of your mistakes? In either case I must blame myself and your brother in the matter of your education.”
Georgiana flushed. “I really do not know what you mean.”
“Like a cow. You have seen a female cow produce milk? Mothers do that when they have children.”
“Like a cow!—oh is that what Lady Macbeth meant when she said, ‘I have given suck?’ Mrs. Younge refused to explain.”
“But she let you read a play about a woman murdering her king?” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied with exasperation.
“It was Macbeth who killed the king, not his wife,” Georgiana replied.
Colonel Fitzwilliam steadily stared at his cousin.
Georgiana looked down. Then she exclaimed. “Oh, you do that every time you go out with Emily?”
“Usually,” Elizabeth replied.
“Is it painful?”
“Not when everything goes well, though on occasions there are problems, such as when the teeth first come in, and they have not yet learned to not bite.”
Georgiana shuddered at that piece of information.
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed, while Mr. Darcy continued to snore.
Emily started crying again and pulling at Elizabeth. With the quarter curtsey that she could manage comfortably while holding a child that weighed the better part of two stone, she retreated to the hallway.
Emily eagerly drank from the breast, and Elizabeth had opportunity for contemplation and thought.
She was too desperate and anxious at present. She needed a scheme and a plan for where to go when she in fact had to leave this house.
But not that life she had led in London again.
When she returned to the room she found George flipping through his story book and ‘reading’ it once more. Colonel Fitzwilliam frowningly picked at the tea plate, and Georgiana stared at him with anxiety.
As soon as Elizabeth returned to the room, Colonel Fitzwilliam rose, inclined his head to her, and said, “I’ll go over to the coaching inn, and see if I can borrow some servants from them. We won’t be here for more than a month. Georgiana, how large was the establishment?”
Elizabeth wondered if the girl would mention Mr. Darcy’s plan to send the two of them out to find new servants this afternoon, but she did not. From her appearance Elizabeth thought Georgiana was decidedly happy to not be required to manage the task.
Not ideal, since Elizabeth thought she should be as much as possible made to do useful things. But Miss Darcy was not her charge.
Shortly after Colonel Fitzwilliam went out, Emily fell asleep in Elizabeth’s lap. Georgiana sat next to Elizabeth and said, “I wish Richard was angrier at me.”
Elizabeth could not help but smile at such a beginning. “Did you depend upon him to despise you sufficiently that you could give over the task of being despised instead of needing to do it for yourself?”
It took Miss Darcy half a second to understand what Elizabeth had said, and then she giggled a little. “Do you always like to say such clever things?”
“Generally. A bad habit I acquired from my father.”
“Am I really so ignorant?”
“Yes.”
The immediate way that Elizabeth replied, and the smile which she showed Georgiana brought a smile in turn from the girl.
“That cannot be wholly my fault. Mrs. Castle—she was the headmistress of my school—and Mrs. Younge made me seem like I was an improper and almost immoral girl if I ever inquired about such matters. I could never dare to ask Fitzwilliam. But surely he would have also refused to say anything.”
“You did not have any friends? Much of what I knew, or believed I knew, for much was of questionable accuracy, came from chattering with my friends.”
Georgiana just looked sad in response to this. She mumbled too quietly for Elizabeth to hear.
“Your school friends did not know any more,” Elizabeth cheerfully said. “Poor girl.”
“I did not have any friends. None of the other girls at school liked me.”
Elizabeth embraced Georgiana. “Poor thing.”
“I don’t think I knew…not until it was half done.”
“Did not know what?” Elizabeth asked softly.
The girl looked down. She had a flushed face. She wrung her hands together. Smoothed the leg of her dress. She shook back and forth a little.
Elizabeth softly asked, “You mean the liberties you permitted Mr. Wickham.”
“Yes. It was half done, and I…I only then started to realize how much it meant. But I would not have stopped him, even if I had fully understood. We were to be married, so I thought…I thought it was still…right.”
Elizabeth shifted Emily in her lap so she could reach out and take Georgiana’s hand.
Oddly, a flash of jealous rage suddenly went through Elizabeth. That damned man. He had promised that he belonged to her. And yet he rutted with this girl, and so many others. Damn, damn, damn him.
That feeling left nearly as fast as it came.
Poor Georgiana.
How had Wickham become such a man?—A girl whom he had grown up with. Wickham had been old enough when she was born that he could likely remember when Georgiana had been a baby.
With Elizabeth holding her hand, Georgiana said slowly, “I enjoyed it. It felt… like nothing ever had before. The pain was nothing to that sensation of…for a minute I was not primarily my thoughts. I was something else. And it was…”
“Like in some essential way this was the purpose of life,” Elizabeth murmured.
“Yes,” Georgiana said. She then stared at Elizabeth. “You know because you have done it. With him.”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Is it always like that?”
It was only possible for Elizabeth to shrug.
The loss of a husband’s touch was by no means the smallest (though by no means the largest) loss that she had received from Wickham’s abandonment. Yet, the fact that he had shared the embrace with so many other women while married to her marred the memory.
For her their joining had been holy, sacred, a sacrament—a lascivious and pleasure filled sacrament.
When she found out, he insisted that she had always been the one who he loved, and who he had chosen to marry—for nothing, a point that he bitterly threw at her, after she bitterly threw at him the waste of his money.
He never tried to explain to her of what the intimacies could possibly mean to him when he enthusiastically craved sharing that embrace with many different women.
“You were married,” Georgiana said. “You did not sin.”
Elizabeth squeezed Georgiana’s hand.
“And then my brother appeared…everything was terrible. And it has all been my fault, and I do not know what to do. I still have a right to try to help others, even if I am a sinner. Mary Magdalene washed Jesus’ feet.
I shall find some way to…serve.” She paused and then added, “Even though I must be excluded from all good company forever.”
There was once again something in how Georgiana said that which made Elizabeth suspect that the young woman viewed being excluded from all good company as more in the nature of the one good thing to come from the whole situation than an awful loss.
“I do not tell you to not blame yourself,” Elizabeth said. “Merely to note that much blame must go to your education, and especially to Mrs. Younge. And Mr. Wickham. But chiefly Mrs. Younge; it was her solemn duty to protect you from such things.”
In a quiet voice Mr. Darcy suddenly spoke. “And a great deal of blame must go to your brother who made the mistake of hiring Mrs. Younge.”
Georgiana half jumped. “You are awake! Have you been for long?”
But before Darcy made any answer, George started running back and forth around the room, and Elizabeth had to put Emily down to curl up asleep in the chair, so that she could prevent her son from waving the iron poker about like a sword.
Naturally, Elizabeth was delighted when Colonel Fitzwilliam returned with two manservants, a cook, and three maids, one of whom had experience enough to serve in the role of a housekeeper for this small of an establishment.
Elizabeth did take Mrs. Brown aside to explain that Sally was a sweet girl, needed constant instruction and a great deal of experience, but that she was still a sweet girl, and to say that when someone was needed to look after the children, it should likely be Sally.
Once the new servants settled in, the house quickly began to run quite smoothly.
The room was cleaned, with no effort on Elizabeth’s own part.
Tea with fresh crackers and properly prepared leaf was brought in.
The broth for Mr. Darcy had a smell that made Elizabeth’s mouth water.
When she stepped into the kitchen, the cook chased her out, saying that everything was under management.